Sudbury is among the best cities in Canada for young people to live and work, according to a new report.

The inaugural Urban Work Index, funded by RBC Future Launch, places the Nickel City in the top fifth of centres analyzed by a Toronto-based think tank.

YouthfulCities — which describes itself as a “social venture focusing on urban research and programming for youth” — ranks Sudbury fourth out of 21 communities in terms of opportunities for workers aged 15 to 29.

The best city overall is Edmonton, according to the study, followed by Montreal and Ottawa.

Rather than simply compare rates of unemployment, the study looks at a wide range of factors influencing youth success, including access to education, cost of living, and programs for entrepreneurs.

Sudbury jumped into the top echelon largely due to its cheaper rents, as well as lower costs for transit and recreation, but could do much more to inspire and support its entrepreneurs and startups.

“Sudbury’s performance is a tale of a split city,” the report notes. “On the one hand, it does very well across the affordability indicators, including finishing first overall in both the cost of housing and the cost of leisure. However, elsewhere it struggles — finishing near the bottom of the pack in terms of the city’s overall economic profile, as well as its employment attributes.”

The city has relatively few co-working spaces, and its fees for new business licences are relatively steep. It also hosts the fewest entrepreneurial conferences of the 21 cities studied, and was 18th in the number of applications to Futurpreneur, a non-profit that supports aspiring business owners under 40.

“There’s a niche to be filled, as the city finishes at the bottom of each attribute in the entrepreneurship theme,” the report points out.

On a brighter note, Sudbury “finishes among the top of the pack (fifth) in terms of the change in youth full-time jobs as percentage of total jobs.”

Like many cities, Sudbury’s population is aging, although its proportion of millennials and the next wave of young people, often referred to as Generation Z, is not insignificant. According to the Urban Work Index, the city’s youth population is 19.8 per cent.

Caitlin McAuliffe, a local researcher for the index project and a millennial herself, said it was an interesting assignment, as well as an unexpected result.

“I know our employment rate for youth is not great, and I’ve seen articles about not being the most entrepreneur-friendly city, so I was surprised we ranked so high,” she said. “But when you compare the affordability, we came out as having the cheapest rent.”

Youth were also invited through a survey to express what matters most to them among four themes — affordability, education, employment and entrepreneurship — “and I guess the result here was we value affordability above services for entrepreneurship,” McAuliffe noted. “So that gave us a bit more weighting for the affordability and that’s why our ranking also increased.”

The Sudbury researcher has found other work locally, including as an analyst for the Northern Policy Institute, but knows many people of her generation who have had to go elsewhere to pursue opportunities in their preferred fields.

“I do think there is a bit of brain drain,” she said. “But I also know a lot of people move here because of affordable housing and then try to look for a job. And there is a shortage in skilled trades, so perhaps that’s another draw for people to come here, and youth specifically.”

McAuliffe said the 21 cities in the study were chosen to provide a cross-section of the most populated centres in Canada — Sudbury being the most populous in this region — but more cities will be represented in a forthcoming Canadian Index.

Sudbury placed ahead of such major centres as Toronto (10th), Calgary (13th) and Vancouver (15th) in the recent study, as well as cities of comparable size such as Moncton (12th) and Oshawa (16th).

While the rankings celebrate the success of youth-friendly cities, they should also motivate municipalities to do more to attract and employ young talent, according to the report authors.

“As Canada’s population ages, we need to make sure our cities are vibrant places for youth to work,” says Robert Barnard, co-founder of YouthfulCities. “Using this new index as inspiration, we have a challenge for Canada and Canadian cities: make full youth employment (youth unemployment below six per cent) a goal by 2024. Clearly, we can, and we need, to do more. We need to spark a national dialogue on the future of urban work and youth’s critical role in it.”